Graduate Student

David Maldonado

David is a formerly incarcerated PhD candidate in the School of Education. He grew up in Berkeley and Oakland and is interested in refusing/unsettling/troubling the logics of the university and the Carceral State from an abolitionist autonomous sensibility.

Specializations and Interests

Carcerality and the University

Edwin Carlos

Edwin Carlos (He/Him) is a 1st year PhD student in the School Psychology program at the School of Education. He is a 2nd generation Filipino American from Renton, Wash., and graduated with a Bachelor's of Arts in psychology and a minor in education from Stanford University in 2020.

His research focuses on the role of ethnic/racial identity and ethnic studies on students' mental health and academic outcomes.

Specializations and Interests

Ethnic/Racial Identity; Mental Health; Ethnic Studies; Culturally Relevant Pedagogy;...

Yi Zhou

Yi (Joe) Zhou is an international student from China. He is a PhD student in the Learning Sciences and Human Development cluster at UC Berkeley's School of Education, advised by Professor Elliot Turiel. Yi is hugely interested in the broad topic of morality, and enjoys reading ethical theories and moral psychology. His own research is in the field of moral development.

He is currently looking at individuals' judgments about the desirability of doing the morally right thing and their practical decisions in social situations involving conflict between morality and self-interest. He is...

Yared Portillo

Yared is a PhD student in the Learning Sciences and Human Development cluster at UC Berkeley’s School of Education with a focus on Language, Literacy, and Culture. Before graduate school, Yared was a community organizer and educator in South Philadelphia where she worked with the Latinx immigrant community. She has also been working as a community-based music educator for nearly 10 years, currently facilitating son jarocho workshops in Sacramento, Calif.

Yared’s research focuses on studying the processes of collective meaning making that takes place in learning and teaching fandango...

Franklin B. Mejía

Franklin B. Mejía received a BA and a Masters in Education at the University of California, San Diego and is currently a 4th year graduate student in the School of Education at the University of California, Berkeley. Currently, he is finalizing his third prequalifying paper and is studying for his oral qualifying examination to advance to candidacy. His areas of expertise include talent development, cultural identities, Latinx education, teacher effectiveness, and Latinx legal court cases involving school segregation/desegregation efforts.

Jacqueline Anton

Jacqueline Anton is a student in the Joint Doctoral Program in Special Education. Her research addresses embodied mathematics interventions for students with moderate/ extensive support needs. She is also interested in inclusive mathematics pedagogy and teacher education. Her work is inspired by her pervious experience as both a general and special education Math teacher.

Specializations and Interests

Mathematics Education, Teacher Education, Inclusive Pedagogy, Disability Studies

Meg Escudé

Meg Escudé is a phd student in the Learning Sciences and Human Development cluster. Her research engages community-based afterschool educators in the co-development of liberatory learning experiences for young people. Meg has over 12 years of experience as an educator and program director in which she worked to create out-of-school learning environments that honor the diverse ways in which non-dominant children and youth express their brilliance, particularly in work that intersects STEM, cultural practice, and art.

Specializations and Interests

Participatory...

Julien Putz

Julien Putz is a first-year doctoral student in the Graduate Group of Science and Mathematics Education (SESAME) at UC Berkeley. His primary advisor is Prof. Dor Abrahamson and he is an active member of the Embodied Design Research Laboratory. He is interested in understanding and modelling the cognitive processes that constitute mathematical thinking from an embodied and enactive perspective. Further interests of his include the relationships between physical skill acquisition and conceptual learning in mathematics. He also seeks to leverage first-person methodologies like...

Qifan Zhang

Qifan Zhang is a PhD student in the Graduate School of Education at the University of California, Berkeley, with a concentration in Policy, Politics, and Leadership. Qifan graduated from Tianjin University and received her Bachelor’s degree in Business Administration. From there, she continued her studies at Georgetown University and received an MA in Public Policy. Before she came to Berkeley, Qifan interned at the National Institute of Education Sciences of China, a Chinese educational think tank.

She is interested in using quantitative methods to explore issues related to student...

Isabella Brown

Isabella C. Brown is both a Marcus Foster and Chancellor’s Doctoral Incentive Program Fellow. She holds an MA from San Francisco State University and is a second-year PhD student in the Joint Doctoral Program with the University of California, Berkeley. In Spring 2019, she was appointed to the position of Graduate Student Researcher at the UCSF-UC Berkeley Schwab Dyslexia & Cognitive Diversity Center, where her research team has been looking at supports for students with disabilities since the onset of COVID-19 and distance learning, and has been working on a review of empirical autism...